The biggest night in the music industry calendar is back to salute outstanding achievement across the business.
The Music Week Awards returns tonight (May 7) and – as we do like to point out – it’s a super-hot ticket with tables selling out several weeks in advance. Given the huge demand for this event each year, we do recommend that you get in early for the 2027 edition.
Once again, the ceremony takes place at the impressive JW Marriott Grosvenor House London, Park Lane, W1, for an evening celebrating the people who help to drive culturally significant moments across the music business.
In fact, the Music Week Awards is the only ceremony of its kind to honour executives across the entire breadth of the business across labels, publishing, live, A&R, radio, marketing, PR and more. You can see all the 2026 finalists here.
The Music Week Awards has been a career milestone for numerous executives – the coveted trophy has now been something to aim for across the decades. Later on tonight another 25 trophies will be handed out to deserving winners.
As the UK industry prepares for another big evening to honour its high achievers, here’s our guide to what to look out for at this year’s over-subscribed event. And don’t forget to visit the Glambot (sponsored by Virgin Music Group), for your team’s photographic memory of the ceremony!
1. BY THE WAY... WE HAVE A NEW AWARDS HOST
For our 2026 ceremony, we’re delighted to welcome broadcaster, DJ and podcaster Harriet Rose as host of the awards.
Rose is well known for her work with ITV and KISS. She made her debut with the KISS Breakfast Team in 2020 and spent several years at the station. She has also become a familiar face performing DJ sets at festivals.
And she’s heading to the awards stage in the wake of her successful new podcast, By The Way, which has so far featured guests including former KISS Breakfast host Jordan Banjo, Cat Burns, Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh, Jonathan Ross and Jade Thirlwall. A good fit, then, for tonight’s ceremony.
“Hosting the Music Week Awards? Are you kidding me – it’s a dream come true,” Harriet Rose told Music Week. “I am so excited to celebrate all the people who make the music industry such a special place, music is the centre of everything for me. It’s an honour.”
2. LABEL CONTEST AMID UK TALENT REVIVAL
This edition of the Music Week Awards reflects success in campaigns and new music for last year – a period when British artists returned to the year-end Top 10 and made an impact internationally.
A glance across the finalists in several categories shows the power of UK music right now, including recognition for the teams behind stars such as Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Dave, Ed Sheeran, Jade, Lily Allen, Sam Fender, Myles Smith, Raye, PinkPantheress, Fred Again.., Wolf Alice and more. So as well as being an evening in recognition of our winners, expect this year’s Music Week Awards to also be a tribute to the collective strength of British music.
Like the top of the Premier League, the Music Week Awards Record Company category has been dominated by a few top teams for the past decade. Could 2026 see a new victor emerge – the music industry equivalent of Premier League leaders Arsenal – or will it be one of the former winners? For the record, the trophy count for the last 10 years in the Record Company category is three for EMI/Island-EMI, three for Polydor, two for Atlantic and one apiece for Syco and XL Recordings.
As defending champions, Island EMI – currently on a high with Noah Kahan’s huge opening week – are taking on fellow Universal labels (Fontana, Polydor Label Group) and rivals including Atlantic, Columbia, Neighbourhood, RCA/Since ’93, Robots + Humans and Warner Records & Parlophone. It makes for a fascinating contest, which will be settled towards the end of the ceremony…
3. CHARITY PARTNER
The Cat’s Mother will be joining us as our official charity at tonight's ceremony. Founded by Natalie Wade and Niki Evangelou in 2019, The Cat’s Mother is a not-for-profit female focused networking service which aims to connect young women (18-24) from low income backgrounds with professional established women who work in the music industry.
We are completely overwhelmed to be named the charity of the year for this year’s Music Week Awards
Natalie Wade, The Cat’s Mother
The service now counts more than 230 active mentors (Cat’s Mothers) who represent different roles within the music industry – from marketing to management, legal to licensing, PR to publishing.
Speaking about partnering with Music Week, Natalie Wade said: “We are completely overwhelmed to be named the charity of the year for this year’s Music Week Awards. We're a small organisation which simply can't run without the time of some bossing female music professionals and the support of the wider music industry community. It’s opportunities like this that will help us make real life changes for the talented, under-represented, low-income young women that we serve. Thanks Music Week!”
4 CENTRE STAGE
For this year’s awards, we’ll be honouring venues across the music ecosystem.
While the crisis continues for the grassroots sector, there are encouraging signs with the launch of new initiatives with funds from the levy on arena and stadium shows. The publicly voted Grassroots Venue: Spirit Of The Scene category (supported by Music Venue Trust) returns to shine a light on the resilient and resourceful gig venues across the country.
Meanwhile, we have reintroduced the Venue Of The Year category, which was open to any non-grassroots venue up to capacity of 24,000, located in the UK. The finalists for this year’s award are: Alexandra Palace, Co-op Live, KOKO, OVO Arena Wembley, Rock City, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, The O2, The Piece Hall and Utilita Arena Newcastle.
Once again, it underlines the Music Week Awards’ broad support for achievement across the industry.
5. HIGHEST HONOUR
Alongside the 24 judged categories, The Strat is the highly coveted award chosen privately by the Music Week team in recognition of outstanding achievements – you can read up on the history of our prestigious award here.
Increasingly, the Music Week Awards welcomes top talent to be part of the Strat celebrations. For the 2025 edition, who can forget the crowd-pleasing – and completely unexpected – appearance from Alex Turner? The sharply dressed Arctic Monkeys frontman turned out to present The Strat trophy to longtime manager Ian McAndrew, CEO and founder of Wildlife Entertainment. The year before that, we had a sensational finale with Girls Aloud out in force to present The Strat to pop polymath Peter Loraine of Fascination Management.
Alex Turner, Emma Greengrass and Ian McAndrew
As for name of the trophy, it was named after Tony Stratton Smith (nicknamed ‘Strat’), an industry character who was a manager and the founder of Charisma Records. Upon learning that he’d won the Strat last year, Ian McAndrew promptly ordered Tony Stratton Smith’s memoir to find out more about the industry trailblazer that the award takes its name from.
Previous winners include the aforementioned McAndrew (2025) and Fascination Management founder Peter Loraine (2024), along with CAA super agent Emma Banks (2023), PR guru Barbara Charone (2022), MOBO founder Kanya King (2021), Darcus Beese (2019) and Max Lousada (2018).
Our deserving winner for 2026 will be revealed at the ceremony’s conclusion…
Music Week would like to thank all of the sponsors who kindly participated in this year’s edition of our Awards:
Music Venue Trust
RadioMonitor
Official Charts Company
For sponsorship opportunities in 2027, please get in touch with Lawrence Cooke: lawrence.cooke@futurenet.com.
Small Green Shoots will also be returning to help at this year’s ceremony – find out more about the organisation here.
To make sure you don’t miss out on next year’s Music Week Awards ceremony, for all table enquiries please contact: Kate.Smith@futurenet.com
